Heinrich Altförst, a cooper (Fassbinder), and his wife Sophia settled in the Volga German colony of Katharinenstadt on 27 August 1766 and are recorded there on the 1767 census in Household No. 82.
Heinrich Altförst, cooper (Böttcher), and his wife Dorothea Elisabeth née Behrend (widow Tiedemann) are recorded on the 1776 Katharinenstadt Grundbuch [Land Register] in Household No. 96.
In 1785, Heinrich Altförst left Katharinenstadt.
The 1767 census records that Heinrich Altförst came from the Dutch village of Megen in Holland. The 1776 Katharinenstadt Land Register records that Heinrich Altförst came from the Dutch village of Megen and that his wife came from the German town of Halle in Sachsen (Saxony).
There are no known surviving male lines of this family among the Volga German colonies.
- 1776 Katharinenstadt Grundbuch [Land Register] (Household No. 96).
- Mai, Brent Alan. 1798 Census of the German Colonies along the Volga: Economy, Population, and Agriculture (Lincoln, NE: American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, 1999): Mv1177.
- Pleve, Igor. Einwanderung in das Wolgagebiet, 1764-1767 Band 2 (Göttingen: Der Göttinger Arbeitskreis, 2001): 294.
Brent Mai